'"Sally. Dun'noa; please, sir, tell I."'
'Well,' said Desvœux, 'theology is a thing I never could understand myself. Now I must be off to my Agent.'
'When shall we see you again?' said Maud.
'Dun'noa,' said Desvœux; 'please, ma'am, tell I. What time shall I come and take you out this afternoon?'
But the ladies had visitors more distinguished even than the General. The Agent himself came in one Sunday after church and asked to be allowed to stay to lunch. Cards flowed in apace from Government House, for the Master of the Ceremonies there knew that no entertainment would be complete where Maud was not.
There were little dances got up expressly in her honour, for which her card of engagements was filled for days before: at every point homage, the sweetest that woman's ears can listen to, awaited her. A chorus of worshippers assured her she was beautiful; the incense was for ever burning on her shrine, till the very air became drugged with flattery. Yet Maud was not completely happy; her conscience was ill at ease. The scene around her was pleasant; but, tried by certain standards, she knew that it would fall short. She remembered, with a sigh, the sort of way in which her cousin Vernon would have turned up his nose at the people among whom she was living, and she knew that in many ways they deserved it. Felicia, she knew, thought Mrs. Vereker utterly frivolous, fast and slightly vulgar; and she felt that Felicia was right. Her husband, conscience reminded her, disapproved of and despised Desvœux: and was there not something to disapprove and dislike about him? Still Maud felt herself unable to resist the current that was hurrying her along. The consequence was that she had fallen out of harmony with those stricter judges whose tastes just now it was convenient to forget. It gave her no pleasure to think of them. She fancied Jem in a silently reproachful mood, Felicia daintily contemptuous, Vernon with an outspoken sneer. Her letters to her husband, though they never contained the hundred-thousandth part of one untruth, began to be less faithful and complete transcripts of her life than of old. Desvœux ought, in truth, to have occupied a more prominent place. She felt ashamed to tell her husband, toiling hard in solitude and heat, of the round of gaiety in which her life was passed. On the other hand, her husband's letters gave her no satisfaction. They were far from amusing; indeed, the life which he was leading was hardly susceptible, in livelier hands than his, of being rendered amusing or picturesque. He missed her, of course; but then he would be with her again in a few weeks, and Maud did not think it necessary to be sentimental about it. His pen was far from a ready one, and this Report, Maud knew, would be worse to him than a campaign. In his letters to her his one idea would have been to conceal from her anything that was disagreeable, and she might, if she had chosen, have augured ill from his reticence; but life just now was too bright and exciting for such inward monition to get a hearing. Her companions had infected her with a passion for pleasure, and duty had faded into indistinctness. Then, too, her new position as a married lady and as Sutton's bride was not without its charm. She was a much grander lady now than she had been the year before as Miss Vernon, and this access of dignity was pleasurable. It involved, however, being taken in to dinner by officials of an age, dignity, and disposition which she found anything but congenial to her own, though Desvœux protested that she was trying to establish a flirtation with the Agent. Once at Government House she had the honour of sitting next the Viceroy, an alarming but yet delightful eminence. How kind he seemed, how full of friendly talk, how eager to know about her husband and his doings!
'How is your preux chevalier?' he said. 'What would become of everything, I wonder, in that stormy corner that he keeps in such good order, but for him? He is one of the people whom I completely trust.'
Maud felt her cheek glowing with pleasure, yet the pleasure was not without a sting. Everybody conspired to speak of her husband as some one beyond the usual flight in goodness, chivalry, nobility of soul. Was she behaving as became the wife of such a man? Was she loving, honouring, and obeying in the full spirit of her vow? Was it honourable or right that half-a-dozen foolish lads should be competing for familiarity with her, and a man like Desvœux be her habitual companion? Ought her husband to hear such things of her? This was the little skeleton which Maud kept locked up, along with many lovely dresses, in her bedroom closet—this the little prick her conscience gave her—this the drop of bitter in the glittering, ambrosial draught of pleasure.
She drank it all the same and found it too sweet to put it from her lips.